Sunday, May 31, 2009

AXIL on Controlling Nuclear Proliferation

The discussion on the Energy from Thorium Discussion Forum is beginning to become an important contribution to the current discussion of energy on the Internet. Many of the discussions conducted on the Energy from Thorium Discussion Forum pages are conducted at a very high level, and worthy of being known outside the small EfT circle. This is most certainly the case for the currently excellent discussion of Nuclear Proliferation control issues.Since I have a blanket permission from AXIL to use his comments in my posts I will offer some quotes from his comments to illustrate why readers who are aware of the importance of the proliferation issue in the future of world energy should read this discussion.

Axil wrote:

In a nut shell, what Holden and his associates in the administration want to keep out of the hands of the proverbial rogue nation is highly enriched uranium, plutonium, reprocessing and enrichment.

In order to entice non-nuclear nations to abide by these restrictions, these nations are provided nuclear fuel or even small sealed reactors at no or low cost in exchange for spent fuel or decommissioned small reactors. This is guaranteed to all signatories to the non proliferation treaty by an international fuel agency that can not use access to nuclear power as leverage in political situations.

The goal is to remove the need for the rogue nation from developing a nuclear infrastructure and a large trained nuclear work force that could be used to develop nuclear weapons on the side and in the dark of night.

By so decoupling nuclear power from the ability to produce nuclear weapons, any nation that persists in acquiring and independent nuclear capability must by doing it to develop nuclear weapons.

---------------------------

The NPT was conceived during the cold war. The current cooperation between the nuclear powers including Russia is a powerful facilitator to the internationalization of nuclear power.

One of the rights that a signatory nation currently has is the right to enrich Uranium. The US wants to remove this ability from the NPT participants. As a participant of the NPT, Iran has the right to enrich uranium. Iran has taught the US some lessons about the shortcomings of the existing NPT.

This current thinking on nuclear power still divides the world into nations that are fully nuclear capable and those that are not; this could be a fatal flaw in the new international fuel strategy.

Let us hope that the first world has matured and can control their use of power at least in regards to the international use of nuclear fuel. The main question is as follows: “are the current nuclear powers willing to cede their monopoly of nuclear power to the rest of the world”? The alternative is that tens of nations could produce bomb grade material and have the knowhow to construct a device with the number increasing each year.

Solving this dilemma is and important step in combating global warming.

------------------------------

Thorium breeding is the possible technical solution to the nuclear proliferation dilemma as follows.

Uranium use would be phased out along with it associated fuel reprocessing or enrichment.

If nuclear power production is decoupled from nuclear weapons production by eliminating the uranium fuel cycle and uranium mining, reprocessing and enrichment, this would free nuclear power to grow unimpeded by proliferation fears.

Besides making the production of a plutonium bomb far more difficult, weapons would have nothing to do with nuclear power. Thorium would be the nuclear power paradigm. Uranium would be the nuclear weapons paradigm.

The technical challenge is to make thorium fuel in the form of pebbles near proliferation proof.

If a nation runs a thorium once through deep burn (<90%)> A blanket pebble is a ceramic coated graphite ball containing only a small amount of fertile thorium each. They are breed to contain fissile U233 in the blanket region of the reactor to form seed pebbles which support the nuclear reaction. The blanket pebbles can be spiked with Th230 to produce additional U232. The U233 content can also be easily denatured by dumping in some U238 (20%) to denature the thorium is the blanket pebbles. There is no such process available for denaturing plutonium..

A large number of seed pebbles (in the hundreds of thousands) would be required to construct a nuclear device enabled through U233 enrichment. Even a diversion of a small number of seed pebbles would cause a subcritical shut down the reactor. Reprocessing/enriching of U233 does not currently exit and would require a huge research and deployment effort by the proliferator.

Very little or a trace amount of PU239 (.001 of the amount contained in LWR waste) is present in the spent pebbles and the Pu238 would make it difficult for weapons construction.

The waste in the pebbles would be short lived (cooled in a few hundred years) and not capable of use in weapons development at any stage. The most long lived waste would be carbon 14 which can be sequestered by absorption in certain minerals at the bottom of a bore hole. Would this work?

----------------------------

If nuclear power production is decoupled from nuclear weapons production by eliminating the uranium fuel cycle and uranium mining, reprocessing and enrichment, this would free nuclear power to grow unimpeded by proliferation fears.

Besides making the production of a plutonium bomb far more difficult, weapons would have nothing to do with nuclear power. Thorium would be the nuclear power paradigm. Uranium would be the nuclear weapons paradigm.

The only thing remaining is to make the seed thorium pebbles near proliferation proof; simple.

As I indicated there are other, equally worthwhile comments that I do not have permission to quote.

2 comments:

I have been beating this drum for years now, trying to get people to see that the connection between nuclear power and nuclear weapons is not as clear-cut as many think they are, and that the whole issue of the proliferation nuclear weapons is driven by far more complex issues than the mere availability of fissile material.

While I respect Axil's views on this subject, I do think that they are not taking into account the broader issues and forces at play in this matter.

Briefly I do not think that there exists a purely technological solution to the proliferation issue. Chasing one I fear is just a waste of time, and can only inhibit the growth of nuclear energy without producing any improvements in security.